Google and Amazon win against the patent troll of the century

A Texas patent court has struck out a patent which was awarded to a man who claimed he invented the interactive internet in 1998.

A federal jury in Tyler, Texas, deliberated for just a few hours this afternoon before concluding that all of Eolas Technologies' claims of ownership to a patent related to the "Interactive Web" were invalid. There were a long line of people queuing up to challenge the validity of the patents including Adobe Systems, CDW, JCPenney, Staples, and Yahoo.

Eolas and the University of California contended it was due $600 million in royalties from the Web companies for alleged violation of a patent. Michael Doyle, along with two co-inventors, were awarded the patent in 1998. The company and the University of California, which co-owns the patents because they originated from work Doyle did while employed by the school, claimed a host of Web sites were infringing on the patent by way of online video streaming, search suggestions, and other "interactive" elements on pages.

Office Depot, Rent-A-Center, Playboy, Oracle, and others have already settled with Eolas. We guess that they are regretting that now.